Please log in

or

Register now for free

or

Choose your profile *

Email *

A valid e-mail address. All e-mails from the system will be sent to this address. The e-mail address is not made public and will only be used if you wish to receive a new password or wish to receive certain news or notifications by e-mail.

Password *

Username *

Sign up to our newsletters

Higher education updates from the THE editorial team

World University Rankings news

Student newsletters

Send me special offers and marketing info from THE and selected partners

UCL marks 30 years of e-networking

The UK's first electronic messages were full of complaints about unexpected
delays, writes Steve Farrar.

Yet the bouts of lethargy that would suddenly afflict the net when Peter
Kirstein was trying to send messages from University College London could not
be blamed on heavy user activity - there were fewer than a dozen in the world at
that time.

UCL is this week celebrating the 30th anniversary of the university becoming
the first international link in the Arpanet - the internet's precursor - in
1973.

Among the pioneers who joined Professor Kirstein to recall the milestone in the
communications revolution were Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, who developed internet
protocols a decade later in 1983.

Professor Kirstein admitted that the occasional delays were the least of his
problems when he was getting the UK online. "We had tremendous difficulty
getting anything agreed," he recalled.

When Professor Kirstein, supported by colleagues at the National Physical
Laboratory, accepted a US offer to link to Arpanet, few people were
interested.

Despite British expertise in computer networking, the Science Research Council
considered that his proposal was unlikely to succeed, while government
departments could see little use for it.

After a nine-month study, the British electronics company ICT concluded that
Professor Kirstein would be better off flying to the US to talk to fellow
scientists in person than pursuing a computer link to the US network.

But eventually, with the NPL and the Post Office behind him, he raised the
money for the link - only to have his US-provided computer impounded by customs
and a £5,000 VAT bill slapped on it.

Despite the setbacks, his persistence was rewarded and UCL has a special place
in internet history as the provider of the UK's principal link with the US in
the 1980s, with Professor Kirstein responsible for the world's second country
domain after the US - .uk.

Today, the UCL professor is a key player in helping to bring satellite internet
access to central Asia.